Page 25 of The Last Feast
She looks at me like she knows I’m beginning to question my decision to be here as she collects her weapons. It was going to be easy to witness her murdering someone, but I’ve continuously given more importance to what other people think of me, so the shame of being intrigued rears its head.
The object of my fascination has never been women. It’s always been watching men bleed and witnessing them struggle. I could lie to myself, say it’s because I imagine the priest who hurt me was in that position, but the truth is, it’s not. I don’t imagine a particular person or desire revenge. My curiosity is more fucked up than that. I just want to see the blood, watch the life drain away, then find tangible evidence there’s no one coming to collect my soul. Then, I’m safe.
Religion is an odd concept. Theoretically, it’s meant to inspire hope. Realistically, it’s been used as a means of control to warp people into keeping their mouths shut, because whatever’s going to come after this life is going to be worse. You can’t speak up about a priest hurting you when he’s helping so many people in your community. You can’t point out their hypocrisy, notwhen the spokesperson for the faith is the person you’re terrified of.
I can rationalize my fear when I was a child. I didn’t know any better—ignorance is expected when your only knowledge comes from adults with ulterior motives. But as an adult, that fear’s still there—this dread they’re right, and when Odette takes her last breath, I’ll catch a glimpse ofsomethingto prove my soul is destined to burn for eternity because I broke the covenant the Father gave me by telling my parents.
Yet, I can’t do it, because I’m not like him. I can’t take away the choice of someone weaker than me. I can’t brutally hurt a woman—even if it’s not the exact same manner as I’ve experienced—because she’s smaller than me, restrained, and therefore vulnerable, just like I was.
And I can’t stop Hana as she drops her ax by my feet, because the fear instilled within me as a child wars against the devotion I’ve found as a man.
She holds the knife that started this out to me and softly says, “I’ll let you have the first cut.”
I pause, debating whether to fall back into old patterns of being fearful or to step into the future as the man Hana has allowed me to be. There’s no judgment on her features as she holds the knife flat in her palm, waiting for me to make a decision.
“What if I don’t?” I ask, my mouth dry at the thought of her sending me away.
“Then you don’t.” She shrugs.
Death has always beensomething I’ve viscerally reacted to. While others would recoil, I’ve found it erotic, though not inthe way I do now, because seeing Hana’s bloodstained skin is nowhere fucking near anything I’ve ever witnessed as we leave the fear factory through a back entrance.
Our fingers stick together with the viscous liquid drying on our skin. But they’d be like that even if it wasn’t there, so I don’t try to remove the blood as snow crunches under our feet. We just keep walking through the field connected to the forest.
It’s late, and the moon is huge, illuminating our path with its silvery light. I can’t go home covered in blood, so I lightly pull her to the left. “This way, baby.”
She skips closer to me, and I wrap my arm around her hips to haul her up. The softest giggle floats out of her as she throws her head back to look up at the branches obscuring the moonlight. How has she just killed a woman and now she’s giggling? Yet I can’t stop smiling as I watch her, in awe of the way she moves through life without burdens. I press my lips to the middle of her neck to feel her soft laughter, but her chest expands as she pulls air into her lungs before letting out a loud howl that sets off the nocturnal wildlife hiding in the forest.
She said she wasjustHana, but she’s notjustanything.
Hana is the remedy to painful existence. With half her face painted as a skull, bloody freckles on the other side where I’ve rubbed the paint away, and her lips stretched into a wide smile, she’s everything and nothing. We were both right, because she’s a contradiction. A woman with childish joy at morbid events. Haunting yet full of life. Violent and gentle as she cups my cheek.
Fuck, I’m falling in love.
No.
Not falling.
Plummeting into an unknown I’ll never be able to predict, like I’ve been pushed out of a plane at a thousand feet with only Hana to act as my parachute.
“Break me, bite me, or mend me?” I whisper against her lips as she leans over me.
My crazy woman softly bites my lip in answer. I know the route with my eyes closed, so I keep walking deeper through the trees to the unused path of my grandfather’s hunting cabin.
“When was the last time you had anything to eat?” I ask as I hug her tighter.
Her eyes sparkle under the silver light as she dramatically drops her voice. “You.”
I laugh with more lightness than I’ve ever possessed. It makes time pass quicker on a never-ending day, because just like Hana said, there’s no tomorrow. We exist now without worries, and we could die at any moment, so I treasure each second of her presence. Even though the snow begins to fall on my bare chest and arms, I enjoy the cold, her warmth pressed against me.
The fencing around the cabin hasn’t been disturbed, since the hunters know not to go near it and any teenagers who have tried would be found due to my parents’ connections. All their status and respect means they can seek justice for an empty building, but they can’t use those same means to get it for me.
Hana stares at the cabin with wide eyes. It’s a cabin in name only—the Aigner property stretches into the forest, stealing nature that should rightfully belong to the inhabitants of the planet. But my grandparents desired privacy, so it was justified to them. The modest wood cabin that was the original Aigner family home some generations ago is barely visible as I carry her through the imposing conifer hedgerows.
That cabin should have been my warning sign as a child that my family doesn’t acknowledge what they deem the ugly parts of life. They don’t restore what’s broken. They ignore it until it’s beyond repair and mask the stench of the rotting timber with more trees. Taller and even denser in position to hide their neglect.
The key is still in the same place: on the porch light that automatically turns on as I step onto the storm porch. Snow falls off my boots, melting into the brown stones, and I keep one hand on Hana’s ass to balance her as I chip the ice away to free the key. She twists her head every which way, noting the ornate carvings on the bullnose trim around the porch. If she’s reconsidering her request for money, I’ll empty every account I have to keep her. I’ll even take her to my parents’ house, introduce her as my wife to collect the next sum of my inheritance. With her, it’d be worth it.
Holding the icy metal in my fist to warm it, I take the opportunity to press Hana against the door and kiss her. She smiles straight away and massages across my shoulders. I shiver when her icy fingers dip beneath the neck of my t-shirt, so I don’t take more and instead open the door to get her warm.
